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R.I.P.D

Rest In Peace Department
Nov 19, 2018dennismmiller rated this title 0.5 out of 5 stars
RIPD is a fascinating movie because virtually every decision made in its creation - from script to casting to performances to special effects - was wrong. The leads, while certainly talented individually, have no chemistry together. For some reason, Jeff Bridges chose to play his character with a thoroughly off-putting mumbly drawl, which worked in True Grit but not here. The world is both inconsistent and incoherent, never feeling like a real, living setting, its cartoonish absurdity complementing the cartoonish CGI in the worst way. No doubt, the filmmakers were aiming for a kind of exuberant wackiness, but they tried too hard and even the most over-the-top elements feel calculated and forced, while the plot is entirely predictable. But the greatest problem is the lack of a metaphysic. It's understandable, of course, that a would-be blockbuster action-comedy cannot afford to alienate potential audiences by presenting a too definite picture of the afterlife. Yet even the basic setup here is badly mishandled. The main characters are ghost cops trying to work off the debts they ran up in life, so it seems as if questions of heaven, hell, sin, and redemption ought to be pressing for them. Bridges' character repeatedly informs us of his anger issues (thankfully, since he generally seems far less angry than Reynolds), so it might have made sense for this to be something he had to overcome in order to "pass on", but it isn't. Nor, after a century of spectral hijinks, does he ever suggest that he is tiring of it, ready to enter into his eternal rest. Even the villain's motivation, which is potentially interesting - he rejects the idea that he should be judged for his sins and so seeks to undo Judgement itself - is treated as nothing more than an excuse for shooting yet another cataclysmic beam into the sky. These are opportunities for depth that are not only suggested but demanded by the setting, yet they are completely ignored.